


The Words Were With -

by gallantrejoinder



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Love Epiphany, M/M, Musings on the nature of humanity, One Shot, POV Third Person Limited, Realization, Repression, Transhumanism but in reverse?, circa. 1941 wartime London, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 18:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19405348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder
Summary: It is not altogether pleasant to discover, nearly six thousand years into an acquaintanceship, that you are in love.Aziraphale thinks that there is probably a reason humans refer to it as 'falling.'





	The Words Were With -

He is sitting beside Crowley in the Bentley and he is looking at the suitcase full of books in his lap, his hands making white-knuckled fists around the handle, and he is thinking, _I love you_. He is covered in dust and smoke and the remnants of a holy place obliterated by the very worst of humanity, and he hasn’t bothered to miracle away the dirt, his corporeal form feeling like such a distant, unimportant thing, and he is thinking, _I love you_. He is Aziraphale, an angel, a principality, a heavenly soldier meant to guard the Earth and guide its human inhabitants towards eternity in God’s boundless love, but there is only one being towards whom he is thinking, _I love you_.

The words swirl around his head, loop back in around themselves like one of those records he’s heard about town, where the chorus rises and repeats and swells and fades, over and over again and so unlike the kind of music Aziraphale usually prefers. He’s starting to understand it now, though. Why the singers and the songwriters give up, helplessly deferring to the same sentiment, replaying until it means nothing at all and everything. Aziraphale is an angel, a principality, and his mind and heart and soul are nothing like a human’s because they are but one, and all of that one sings, _I love you_.

He’s heard it said that the repetition of that particular sentiment, that particular phrase, makes it meaningless. Aziraphale is beginning to understand, however, that you can say it in a hundred, a thousand different ways, and never diminish it. He understands this because he is sitting in the Bentley beside Crowley and he is remembering all the ways he said it before he thought it, and he wonders if Crowley knows.

Crowley was an enemy once, maybe, a hundred human lifetimes ago, and are they not just a little more human for having been here for so long? Aziraphale feels himself shying away from the thought – it terrifies him, terrifies him in the way he imagines humans feel when they see beings like him in their true natures. Oh, but aren’t they? Aren’t they just a little?

And if they _are_ , just a _little_ more than an angel and a demon performing their duties, then why not? Why not let their enmity die its final death, put away defences, and forge ahead into something new? In truth, they’re already best friends. Someone help him, but they are. _You’re my best friend_. It’s almost – more intimate, in its simplicity, that simple statement of fact. The thought intrudes through the chorus of _I love yous_ , and intertwines itself with the phrase like it’s always been there. _You’re my best friend_. _I love you_.

This body does not need to breathe, but it retains its memory of function, has all the prerequisites for disguise. There’s a clawing, sticky feeling in Aziraphale’s throat, like the body is trying to keep the words in. _And the Word was God_. The Words are Aziraphale. The very essence of him.

That’s blasphemy. He shouldn’t do that. Shouldn’t …

He turns to look at Crowley, whose eyes are hidden away beneath those ridiculous glasses of his, and Aziraphale doesn’t even know how Crowley can see where they’re going, it’s so dark. The road is covered with rubble everywhere but where the Bentley sets its path, and the air is filled with smoke, and there are sirens in the distance. But Crowley gazes steadily forward, a tiny wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. Concentrating. His hand, singular, is loose on the wheel of the Bentley, but Aziraphale has forgotten to be scared. The other hand rests on the seat beside his leg, spread as usual. Crowley’s open hand, relaxed, resting between them.

_You’re my best friend. I love you_. The words come back with unwelcome force, and Aziraphale turns his head away once more.

He sits and faces forward and sees nothing, and thinks, _You’re my best friend. I love you_ , until he can’t stand it anymore.

“Crowley?”

Crowley doesn’t even turn his head. “Hmm?” It’s a disinterested noise.

Aziraphale hasn’t thought this far head, and that should be comical, obviously, and he should be embarrassed – quite embarrassed – but there are only the words, suffocating him.

“I only wanted to say,” _You’re my best friend. I love you_. “Thank you. For the books. For everything.”

Crowley grumbles. “I already told you, _don’t_ mention it. Means you owe me one, angel.”

Aziraphale heard a song on the radio once in which the singer called their lover an angel. Crowley doesn’t mean it like that, and it has never occurred to Aziraphale before this moment that Crowley _could_ mean it in another way, but now the thought has entered his head and he thinks again, are they a little bit more human? Are they human _enough_? For this, at least?

“Speaking of,” Crowley adds casually, “I don’t want to bring up old favours unfulfilled, but … you remember 1862?”

A shutter closes over the window which has, for the last twenty minutes, been pouring endless light into the very core of Aziraphale. Of course they aren’t human enough. Not for this. Not for anything at all.

“Don’t,” he says softly. “Don’t you dare bring that up with me again.” Oh. He’s angry.

Aziraphale has been angry before, but rarely with Crowley. Annoyed, yes, frustrated, even. But only ever this angry once before, in 1862. He should have known, of course – Crowley had said so, even, in the church. Pointed right at the holy water as if it was some great shock that its blessing was free for humans to take. Of course this is all that Crowley wants from him. The books were a favour. The saved paperwork, a favour. Aziraphale _owes_ him.

And this anger is tinged with something like the colour violet, which despairs. _You’re my best friend. I love you. How can you do this to me?_ That’s not angelic. But it can’t be human. Neither of them are human.

“Just thought it might be worth a shot,” Crowley sighs.

Aziraphale’s body knows how to do this, to process heartbreak and elation and fear and repulsion. It pushes tears through the corners of his eyes, and he miracles them away without a second thought, banishing them to a distant star where no one will ever find them.

“Well, stop asking,” he says, and his voice is steady at his command. “Let me out.”

Crowley glances over. “I can take you to the shop, you know. It isn’t far.”

“I know. So let me out here. I need the air.”

Crowley snorts. “You don’t need _air_. You’re not _human_.”

It is a sharp pain, now, sudden. Aziraphale says nothing.

“All right. Your stop.” Crowley pulls over, and Aziraphale gets out calmly.

He hesitates before shutting the door. “I suppose … I’ll be seeing you?” The pain dulls, like a sweet ache.

Crowley looks at Aziraphale with a strange expression on his face, as if he is just noticing for the first time something that has always been there. “Guess so.”

Aziraphale shuts the door. The engine rumbles, a low sound which goes right through Aziraphale’s body’s skull. Crowley drives away, into the smog and the distant shouting, and Aziraphale suddenly feels very alone.

**Author's Note:**

> [My Tumblr.](https://gallantrejoinder.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Always remember to tip your writer by commenting <3


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